Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s prime minister during the 1980s, took a dim view of Airbus’s prospects. Asked to provide government money to support the launch of a new small passenger aircraft, the A320, she warned: “It will never work, Boeing will dominate the market.”

It was a reasonable assessment at the time. Airbus was then an upstart European competitor to the US aerospace and defence giant, whose best-selling 737 jet had already been flying for over a decade.

Despite her initial misgivings, the UK lent close to ￡250mn towards the launch of the new aircraft. The decision paid off. The A320 family of single-aisle jets, typically used on short and medium-haul flights, is now poised to overtake the 737 as the most popular commercial aircraft in history with 12,153 delivered since launch, according to aviation consultants Cirium.